The premise of this session is from the movie: The Matrix. In a critical scene Morpheus offers a choice to Neo – the choice between the blue pill or the red pill. Morpheus explains “You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.“

Michael and I offered this choice to a client – do you want us to do a train-and-go approach or do you want us to work on the challenges that have been identified by the staff and teams? And, to our delight, the leadership group chose the red pill. They wanted to work on the identified problems and dig deeper into what is actually going on…

During this session, Michael started off by telling the story about The Matrix and the experiences we had at some clients. Others also shared their stories. We discussed some concepts together and I wrote them down.

Summary of concepts

As a group we discussed blue pill moments and actions that we saw or did ourselves. It was very revealing and the participants showed courage to admit this.

Blue Pill Moments

Then, it made sense, to discuss our red pill moments. It was great to see that the participants faced their fears in tough situations.

Red Pill Moments

And finally, we discussed how we can move from a blue pill to a red pill moment. I will be using many of these in the months ahead.

Move from Blue to Red

So what do you think? Where on the spectrum are you comfortable? Do you prefer swallowing red pills? Blue pills? Or maybe purple pills?

I hope that this post will help you on your own quest to face your fears, acknowledge your contribution in the organization and system that you belong to.